Entreprenuership Awareness Program- Day 4

We started off Day-4 by discussing some of the important aspects to be considered for starting an industry. I would like to list down some of the points here: Capital, Man-Skill, Management, Product- Choice of prodcut. Later on there was a discussion on “Opportunity”.  Mr Bannerjee gave examples of different opportunities which were missed by very well known companies/entrepreneures. One has to break out of fixed ways and think of New and better routes. The entrepreneur should have more of Lateral thinking. What exactly is Opportunity? Opportunity is a course of action which at first sight may not appear possible but with focussed thinking possiblity should increase. Opportunity is as real as raw materials, labour, finance. It exists only when u see it.

How to look for opportunities?

Opportunities can be:

• A new idea
• New way of doing things
• New way of looking at things

Starting Point- Checklist for thinking for Opportunities

• Intrinsic Asset
• Operating Asset
• Situation Asset- Opportunity due to situation
• Left behind- Areas left behind found during scanning of environment
• Synergy
• Variable Value- Utilising things thrown away for example making bricks out of fly ash
• Challenge- Doing something different
• De-Averaging- Segmentation- Think of movie theaters- Different ticket denomiations
• Disadvantage into advantage- Utilizing the waste thing into an advantage- Converting old bread into rusk
• Me Too- Trying to implement the same idea done by the other one
• Brought from Abroad- Implementing ideas brought from abraod- may work not work at times
• Focus on areas of strength

Next there was a discussion on “Marketing“. In marketing we were told that “Customer” is the main player. He is the “King” and not “God” its because God can forgive but “Customer” never.  One has to think of customer’s needs and comfort. Choice of product should be such that there is competitive advantage before starting a unit. Various factors which can be considered for choosing a product are:

• Get the idea by interacting with the environment
• Survey of the new idea among friend circle- pilot survey
• Making a prototype of the product to get idea of the cost of product.

There is no marketing required when there is

• GOD Product
• GOD Salesman- One who can sell a refrigerator to Eskimo , spectacles to blind
• GOD Father
• GOD Percentage

After this we discussed about “Segmentation“. Segmentation can be –

• Geographic- As per the area
• Demographic- As per age
• Psycho graphic- As per psychology/ psychological division

After lunch there was a talk on the financial aspects and were told about the different loan schemes available. We were told about Capacity, factors effecting capacity, importance of capacity assessment, capacity assessment methods. After a small break there was a talk on Inventory Management, cost pricing, loans. As all these were a bit banking related terms i found them difficult to understand.